Quotes About Narrative

This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and it's object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.

Mark Twain. The truth should never be permitted to stand in the way of a good story.

Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred;

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.

SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a boy, it must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a man. When one writes a novel about grown people, he knows exactly where to stop—that is, with a marriage; but when he writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can. Most

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told

persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story

T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. B

Nada devem saber a meu respeito a não ser que tenham lido «As Aventuras de Tom Sawyer». Não faz mal. O livro foi escrito pelo senhor Mark Twain, e ele contava quase sempre a verdade.

They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

It's no wonder truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Le romancier qui écrit une histoire d'adulte sait exactement où et comment s'arrêter, c'est le plus souvent par un mariage. Quand il s'agit d'un enfant, il s'arrête où il peut.

a story I've already lived and really don't need to retell here.

We all create stories to protect ourselves

despite rational objections, technology's failure is overrun by the onslaught of myth.

One sinking ship after another, in fact that was the conclusion to every single story he told, so that we, his strange audience, learned not to wonder about the end but paid more attention to the tale preceding the end, those distinguishing events before the inevitable rush of icy water, whirlpools . . .

Yes, often, I am reminded of her, and in one of my vast array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt- an immense leap of an attempt- to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it. Here it is. One of a handful. The Book Thief. If you feel like it, come with me. I will tell you a story. I'll show you something.

I'm not mixed up at all. I'm only telling you what you said. What someone says and what happened are usually two different things, Rudy, especially when it comes to you. -Liesel Meminger

When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.

You're far from this. This story is just another few hundred pages of your mind.

I can promise you that the world is a factory.  The sun stirs it, the humans rule it.  And I remain.  I carry them away.- spoken by death